


Spider Dance

by Treike



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Light-Hearted, Multi, Post-True Route, Romance, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 16:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10469553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Treike/pseuds/Treike
Summary: Frisk and the Monsters have left the underground and established the new colony of Sureface in Ebottsdale. However, Frisk returns to the caverns often to meet Muffet. Can you guess why?





	

"kid, you do realize you're playing with fire, right?"

Sans' words echoed back through Frisk's memory as they downed the tea, trying to ignore the dry cobwebby tinge as Frisk's host smiled in approval.

Lowering the cup, Frisk could sense her peering at him expectantly through all five of her dark eyes.

So Frisk rewarded her by smiling appreciatively.

The spider-girl monster relaxed and leaned back into her webs, a smile gracing her own fanged mouth as she gazed at Frisk, "Why, my best customer! I really should think about bringing you into the business, Frisk."

Frisk substituted for words by replying with a bite of spider croissant, trying not to gag as some of its grey, dusty innards scraped on the way down.

Muffet leaned back up, shaking her twin pigtails loose of some sticky strands of web as some of her smaller cousins darted back for cover in the recesses of the cave, "It's odd, Frisk. You must be so busy helping the king and queen build the colony up on the surface, but still you find so much time to come down here and see me..."

It was true. Ever since the barrier fell three months ago, Frisk had been living with a new adoptive mother, Toriel, in the monster colony of Sureface (Papyrus and his spelling errors - but unfortunately he'd stuck the sign in the ground too soon to stop him). With the massive influx of monsters leaving the underground and building new homes on the surface, it had been quite a busy and trying time for the underground's young human hero.

Once the monsters learned of their freedom when the barrier fell...well, it had still taken a while to get things moving. None of them had expected or prepared for this - and not even Frisk's passage had done much to raise the weary, skeptical monsters' spirits that they would be released.

But with the massive shockwave and possession of every monster's soul that briefly preceded the fall, they had immediately come alert and the news had spread quickly. Some monsters - like the redundantly-named Monster Kid - had immediately charged for the exit, feeling it was too good to be true and if they hesitated the barrier would be thrown up again any minute. Others - like Gerson and Napstablook - had been in denial for some time, too stunned to believe it had actually happened. And others - such as Grillby, Mettaton, and the resort shopkeepers Bratty and Catty - had tried to set their affairs in order first, packing up, shutting down their businesses properly, and making an orderly move to the new colony.

The spiders, however, were happy in their natural dark cavern habitat, and were the only major monster society that chose to remain within the underground. Although, they had relocated most of their lair to the now-deserted royal palace, and King Asgore was more than happy to let them.

The first time Frisk had gone back through the caves to assist in the relocations, Muffet had been waiting in her old lair, snatching Frisk up and giving the poor child a close idea of what a crushing six-armed hug would feel like, purring through her fangs that she knew Frisk would never give up for a second.

Some monsters, like Temmie, Mettaton and Muffet herself were difficult to judge in terms of sanity. Not by the traditional sense of whether what they said or did made sense or not - but rather in the way that their every single word or action was so disconnected from the norm and situation at hand that it couldn't even be compared on the same scale. Muffet, for example, had been far more concerned at the time with the success of her spider bake sales and uniting the spider clans than she had on capturing human souls or escaping the underground.

But her reaction made it clear Muffet was happy with the events that transpired that day. Even though, as far as Frisk could tell, she and the spiders faced no real benefit from the barrier's fall since they had all simply left the ruins and settled in the palace instead...

They seemed happy where they were - they WERE spiders after all...

Muffet rested her round chin on one of her hands as she busied herself with refilling her cup with her other arms, "I'm glad you come to see me so often, my young friend - I have you to thank for our bake sales' success after all - but why? The journey here couldn't have been easy..."

That was true. Although Sureface rested at the very foot of the mountain, the hike back up to the entrance to the underground was not inconsiderable, which was why the relocation was taking so long for so many monsters. The logistical difficulties of moving entire livelihoods down a whole mountainside were slowing things down drastically.

But Frisk had been determined to make sure no-one got left behind and had repeatedly, over Toriel's objections, accompanied Asgore's stewards to help other monsters with the move. Sureface was still growing every day and Asgore and Alphys had estimated the move would not take weeks but _months_ to complete. And that wasn't counting the difficulty in food and power. The monsters were going to have to rely on the Core and several other resources still within Ebott for a while until new facilities could be constructed.

Luckily though, Ebottsdale was remote enough that no humans had happened upon the new colony yet, which Frisk was glad for. The last thing the monsters needed was a large crowd of curious humans coming upon his new friends when they were still trying to set up shop in their new home. Even Frisk was old enough to know these things needed to be taken one step at a time if they wanted to avoid chaos.

Not that that stopped Papyrus from venturing out everyday into the dale looking for more humans...

Frisk shook their head briefly to clear it and smiled in answer up at Muffet, who descended on a thread to ruffle Frisk's hair. The young human didn't seem to mind the gesture or consider it condescending, but actually rather enjoyed it, giving a small chuckle and reaching up to gently take hold of Muffet's wrist...

...and, with exaggerated refinement, placed a kiss on Muffet's slender lavender hand. Her flesh was cold, fuzzy, and coarse, but Frisk's lips still burned. Muffet's mouth twitched in a delighted smile, but Frisk did not stop there...

Frisk gently raised her index finger and kissed its bony tip, and then the next, and then kissed all of her fingers gently before lowering her hand.

The child glanced up to see Muffet's expression. The spider was smiling slightly, her fangs glinting in the dim light as one of her lower eyes widened slightly and the one above it closed and quirked. Since Muffet didn't have eyebrows or much flexible flesh in her face, she often used the dexterity of her five large eye sockets to compensate for expressions.

"Ahhh...that is the way of it then..." she said in a low voice, leaning down to rest her arms on the webbed table and bring her face down to level with Frisk's. "...Love me, do you? Uee hee hee!"

Frisk smiled and gave a quiet, nervous chuckle, the memory of Sans' voice still echoing in their head...

*

"kid, you do realize you're playing with fire, right?" Sans leaned back, resting his bony arms behind his head in his seat at New Grillby's. His eyes wandered over to Frisk beside him, whose mouth was still stuffed full of a slice of Grillby's new bluegrass pie.

"muffet is a spider, frisk! a _spider_! they ain't exactly the world's best girlfriends, know what I'm sayin'?"

Frisk took an enormous swallow and nodded. The slight hardening of the eyebrows and pursed mouth, however, showed Frisk was far from convinced.

Sans sighed "now she's pretty in her own way, i'll give her that, but she's so out of touch with everything goin' on out here. heck, she probably had no idea you were a human until you got caught in that web of hers. even if you did date her, she'd probably forget it all after an hour or two. that's just how discombobulated bat-shit insane muffet is..."

Frisk snorted and cast a quirked eyebrow at Sans. The irony wasn't lost on the skeleton, who chuckled.

"heh, yeah. her and half the monsters in the underground, huh?" He paused to take a swig of his drink, the beverage sliding slowly between the unseen grooves in his solid, immovable mouth. "still, there's the other problem. spiders aren't very kind to their mates. even if you were old enough to be with muffet, well...it'd be pretty painful for you, kid. she'd...er...don't tell toriel i told you this, but muffet probably wouldn't be gentle if things got physical. spiders bite, you know." He coughed uncomfortably. "and that ain't the worst of it. when you get older, and if muffet decides she wants children, well..."

His white pinprick pupils slowly floated in Frisk's direction, "well, it was nice knowin' you, kiddo!"

He took another swig, "so that's where you've been sneakin' off to. it's been worrying toriel...ya know kid, you could ask her what she thinks about it. she'll tell you the same thing..."

At Frisk's unchanging expression, Sans chuckled slightly, "well, i can't change your mind can i? the heart wants what the heart wants i guess. just don't say i didn't warn ya..." he signaled to Grillby, who nodded his fiery head in understanding that he'd put the evening on Sans' tab.

*

"Why, thank you, Frisk!" Muffet smiled as she accepted the ribbon and wound it around her left pigtail. "I thought I had lost this forever! You found it in the ruins, you say? I must have lost it when I packed up the bake sale in that area..." Muffet gently placed a kiss on the child's cheek in gratitude, careful to avoid pricking the flesh with her fangs.

She didn't want to bite Frisk. No, it still wasn't time for that yet...

But the human seemed to like the gesture, chuckling and reddening slightly.

Muffet took hold of the human in four of her arms before beginning to climb her strands. She would take Frisk to the highest places of the underground, where they could see the stalactite stars together from up close...

*

"Muffet?! Frisk is in love with _Muffet_?!!"

"yep, looks that way tori..."

Toriel blinked, her mouth hanging open like she didn't know what to say, before she finally substituted by taking a large bite out of her snail pie.

She chewed and swallowed, eyes darting around wildly, while Undyne stared incredulously at Sans from the other side of the table, her salad untouched in front of her. Papyrus had paused in his movement, his spaghetti-wrapped fork halfway to his mouth before he stopped, stunned. Forgotten spaghetti sauce was leaking down onto his clothes.

Toriel finally spoke, her eyes far away, "Well, this is unexpected. I thought there might have been someone special involved from how secretive Frisk has been lately, but I...never thought it'd be the spider queen..."

Undyne groaned and facepalmed, "Ugggh, I know usually this kinda thing just ain't my game...but _Muffet_?! Seriously?! Even I know Frisk must be insane!"

Papyrus, meanwhile, had finally come out of his shock and let out a high, almost girlish screech of delight, "Our human friend has found love! Oh, this is fantastic! We must have a celebration! And I, the great Papyrus, will be the event planner! Let's see, a large party with heart-shaped webs and spider-leg spaghetti platters and..."

Undyne quickly shut him down before he could dig himself any deeper, "Hold on a second, Pap! We don't know if they're even really together or if Frisk is just crushing on her, or even how Muffet feels about Frisk. Let's face it, it's almost impossible to know what that spider is thinking!"

"You have the right of it there, Undyne..." Toriel said, looking worried, "Muffet is much older than Frisk, not to mention she is a monster and Frisk is human. Who can tell how far their relationship will go? But it's not just like we can forbid either of them to go any further even if we wanted to. Muffet has always gone her own way and probably wouldn't accept that. And we know how determined Frisk can be..."

Undyne snorted, "Determined? Yes. Stupid? No. Frisk wouldn't go after Muffet if she wasn't at least interested..."

Sans groaned, "from frisk's reaction whenever i ask, i get the feeling muffet is at least interested...or she doesn't chase frisk off or try to feed frisk to her pet spider anyway..."

"But brother, surely this is a happy thing?" Papyrus chirped, sounding puzzled. "If Frisk and Muffet are happy with the each other, shouldn't we support them as all good friends should?"

Sans left his answer up to Toriel who sighed and briefly got up from her chair, reaching behind her to pluck one of her books from her bookcase. As she sat back down and lowered it into the tabletop, Papyrus saw that it was a book describing arachnids.

"Papyrus..." Toriel began, flipping open her book, "I'm afraid female spiders can be quite dangerous to mate with..." she pointed to a large diagram of a large spider with a swollen abdomen biting the head off another, smaller spider that looked like it was facing it and grappling legs. "Some spiders eat their mates either before or after the males have attempted it. And some lay their eggs inside their mates' bodies or the skulls of prey they have devoured..."

Papyrus had his drink to his mouth at that point, which of course meant he did an instant spit-take right into Undyne's face! Luckily, she was too disconcerted to do anything before the skeleton blurted out " _Muffet wouldn't do that!_ "

He was then promptly whacked in the face by Undyne's heavily-muscled blue fist, loosening some of his teeth. He yelped and got up, running circles around the kitchen with Undyne howling furiously as she gave chase with a summoned energy spear, hot chocolate still dripping down her face.

Toriel facepawed and groaned, "I sometimes wonder how such insane people can always be our friends, Sans..."

The skeleton shrugged and winked in response "with our history, i guess being whacko must be in the job description somewhere, tori."

Toriel sighed patiently and smiled at Sans before turning serious again despite the carnage brewing in her kitchen, "Although your brother may be right, I don't think anyone really knows what Muffet would do. No one here really knows her that well since she keeps to her spiders most of the time, and while she's a spider _monster_ \- not exactly a spider - who knows how much she'd act like one when it comes to mating?"

Sans gave a small nod to say he had already thought as such, "frisk seems to think she wouldn't hurt anyone though, but you know how trusting that kid is..." his eye sockets narrowed slightly, "and while it got us all out of the underground, i'm still not convinced that's not gonna get frisk in big trouble one day..."

Toriel nodded, leaning aside slightly to dodge a bone ricocheting across the room, "Yes, I'd love to believe it's the best thing about my child, but I admit there are times when even I wonder if Frisk might be a little naive about the goodness of others."

Sans grimaced slightly, his shoulders hunching "and muffet may not even _realize_ she's doing anything wrong if she hurts frisk. for all we know it may just be her nature...but we have to be careful when we bring this up. i'm sure you know how kids get when their grown-ups try to interfere with puppy love..."

Anything Toriel tried to say in reply was promptly cut off by a screaming Papyrus flying through the air and landing with a noisy clatter on the dinner table, spraying pie, pasta, and vegetables everywhere.

*

Muffet lowered her head again, her fangs glinting as she tore another strip off her meal, chomping down on the sweet innards. Who knew a human would make such a tasty morsel? The sweet, squishy outer skin that tore off so easily between her teeth, opening up the sweetness within that quivered and tingled all the way down her tongue. She sighed as she gulped down more and more bites. A tiny drop of red dribbled down her chin and she hurriedly dabbed at it with a napkin. She knew she might never get the chance to eat this sweet treat again, and her lover had paid such a high price to give it to her...

She set down her plate and pulled Frisk over the table into a six-armed hug, still licking her lips appreciatively, "Oh Frisk, thank you so much for spending all your allowance making that jelly donut for me! If only I could have sold them at my bake sales the other clans would've come home twice as quickly..."

She was again tempted to kiss Frisk, but she knew the human would inevitably be poisoned if she did. She groaned inwardly - there were times she _hated_ her venom glands...

*

"...and that's how babies are made."

Frisk raised one eyebrow. From the quivering grimace at the corner of the mouth and the slight shaking of the arms on Frisk's school desk, Toriel could see her child was trying _very_ hard not to laugh.

She grimaced as she looked back at her not-too-subtle artwork on the blackboard. A spider monster - that coincidentally looked a lot like Muffet - was standing over a clutch of silk-wrapped egg cocoons, smiling with hearts floating over her head. In the far corner was a drawing of a skeleton wrapped up in a crude spiderweb - a small skeleton that had a very distinctive sloping hairstyle, large 'X's drawn where the eye sockets would be and a loose tongue lolling out of the missing lower jaw.

_Alright_ , Toriel supposed, _I_ _could_ _have_ _planned_ _that_ _better_.

There was a strangled gagging noise behind her and she turned back around to look at Frisk's two classmates. The Monster Kid had their eyes tightly shut, probably wishing they had hands so they could cover them. And Papyrus, seated on Frisk's other side, stared at the board with wide eyes before swallowing a lump in his throat, a slight greenish tinge appearing on the white of his cheekbones...

At that, Frisk couldn't contain it any longer and collapsed laughing onto the desk. Toriel groaned and pinched the bridge of her muzzle between two claws as Frisk pounded on the desktop in tears...

*

"You gotta admit, Pap, Frisk doesn't talk much, huh?" Undyne said with a puzzled frown as the human child began hiking back up the path to Mt Ebott, "Come to think of it, I can't remember a single time Frisk spoke to me directly. We're the ones who do almost all the talking."

It was true, Papyrus supposed. Although Frisk was not a mute, the human usually preferred to observe their surroundings in silence rather than speak up. But, oddly enough, Frisk never seemed to have any problem communicating. One could tell just by looking at that stoic face and pair of heavy-lidded eyes what Frisk was trying to say. A flicker of a smile, a minor furrow of the eyebrows, the curious tilt of a chin - all of them spoke volumes for the child...

"Well, I never thought of myself as a blabbermouth before this, but Frisk sure has a way of making you feel like one," Undyne said, pursing her scaly lips "Maybe we really are trying too hard...or overthinking it. Maybe the Muffet and Frisk puppy love thing really IS just a puppy love thing and we don't need to worry..."

Right there, before their eyes, a crowd of spiders started pouring out of the cracks in the rock face where Frisk was walking. Undyne hissed and summoned an energy spear in alarm as they swarmed over Frisk's small body, but stopped as she noticed the human simply stand there with arms outstretched...

Papyrus' jaw fell open, his eye sockets widening to the point his seldom-seen eyeballs were visible. The spiders were weaving something over Frisk's body - he could see strands of white appearing over the shoulders, chest and pants. After several seconds the spiders cleared off Frisk, leaving the human clad in what looked like a silken rock-climbing harness.

Stunned, they watched as the spiders vanished back into the rock face and a slender strand of web descended from above...

Frisk fastened the web to the front of the harness and gave the spiders peeking out of the crevices a thumbs-up. Right then, the web rope began pulling Frisk up the mountain to the caves...

Once they were out of sight, Undyne and Papyrus glanced at each other and facepalmed in unison.

"Okay, so maybe _not_ puppy love then..." Undyne groaned.

*

"Y-you want me to make _WHAT_ , Frisk?" Alphys clutched the hem of her lab coat nervously.

Frisk slowly held up a vial full of bubbling green liquid. Alphys turned pale and took a step back, raising her short stubby arms as if to ward it away, "D-don't bring that too close! I...er...don't know if I can help you with that, really. S-sorry, I'm so sorry, but...er... biochemistry isn't really my area of expertise..."

The young human looked down for a moment, and then at Alphys again, who shifted her feet uncomfortably.

"Um...well, perhaps I could try it, but I've never done anything like that before and I can't guarantee it'll work. What do you want it for anyway?"

Frisk beamed, and slowly held up two photographs: one showing Frisk and Muffet holding each other in a large web, and, deftly sliding the other forward with a flick of a finger, one of them with their faces very close together...but not quite touching.

If their faces WERE touching they'd be...

Alphys immediately turned beet red, blushing to the point Frisk wondered how she managed not to faint from all that blood blasting to her reptilian skull.

Alphys slowly backed away, her tail ramrod straight in her fiddling claws, wandering over to her workbench. Half of the hard metal surface was covered with thick stacks of files and blueprints, half-empty coffee mugs and discarded pencils, while the other half was stacked with open packs of ramen, discarded comic books, and anime DVD cases next to an old laptop computer. Alphys sat before the whole mess on a leather black lab stool, holding her head in her claws, "Oh...oh my..."

Frisk waited patiently as Alphys slowly worked her way through her shock and anxiety, knowing it was best to let the scientist puzzle things out on her own.

After a few moments, Alphys cleared her throats and spun around on her stool, facing the human again...

"F-Frisk...if I understand you correctly..." she pointed a claw at the vial of green liquid in Frisk's hand, "that's Muffet's venom, and you want me to use it to synthesize an antivenom so you and Muffet can...er...you know..." Alphys went red again.

Nod.

Alphys slowly wrung her claws together, looking down at the floor as she considered the request.

"Frisk...I'm sorry to say this because I'm sure you've heard this before and don't want to hear it again from me, so I'm sorry, but..." she looked up at her guest again, "aren't you a little young for this?"

Frisk raised one eyebrow for a moment, then smiled and raised an arm toward the window, sweeping the arm the length of the window in a presenting gesture.

Alphys glanced out the window, taking in the new buildings and fields of Sureface and understood the human's meaning.

Frisk had made all of this possible, through sheer determination, by making peace with all the inhabitants of the underground, by defeating the echo of the grief-maddened Prince Asriel. No, Frisk had left childhood behind a long time ago, even though it was a child's body Frisk still wore.

Not only that, but by the mysterious powers of determination, it was possible Frisk had 'reset' the timeline numerous times, with the mind and spirit aging with each journey even though the body remained the same.

Alphys knew she could hardly say Frisk was too young for anything...

She gave a small smile as she looked back at the human, "Well, it will take some time - but I suppose I can theoretically synthesize an antivenom. It should stop the poison, but..."

A raised hand, a shake of the head and another smile. Alphys understood: _that's all I'm asking._

The child placed the vial on one of Alphys' steel tables, and nodded farewell, turning to leave.

*

Muffet pulled Frisk close, pressing her forehead to the human's own, all five of her eyes closed in slits as an expression of bliss rested on her face.

Frisk leaned in close. Muffet opened one eye and it promptly widened.

"My love, you..."

Frisk grinned in reply, gently pulling Muffet closer on their strands of web.

"Frisk, you don't understand. If you...do that, you'll die! I don't want the world to reset again! If you do that, I'll forget all about us." Muffet sighed forlornly, looking down.

Then the tinkle of glass drew her attention. She looked up again to see Frisk smiling and gently waving a glass vial from one hand. Within was a smooth, golden-yellow liquid...

Muffet slowly smiled through her fangs, "Oh, you clever..."

She raised a slender finger to Frisk's lips, "Maybe you won't die now, Frisk. But there will be pain..."

The small chuckle and brief head shake assured her that Frisk wasn't worried.

"Well then..." Muffet said, grinning and gripping Frisk behind the head, "Come here, you! Ueee hee hee!"

Cold, fuzzy, and with repeated stabs of pain as her fangs dug again and again into the skin of Frisk's lips.

Frisk didn't care. This was heaven anyway.

*

Toriel tried not to grimace as she bent down and placed yet another band-aid over Frisk's mangled lips, "My child, you know I am happy for you...err...but I really wish you would restrain yourself a little more. Dear me, if this keeps up you'll have permanent scars!"

Frisk didn't reply, and even if not naturally quiet, Toriel wouldn't have been surprised. From that wide, goofy grin stuck on her child's face, the thousand-mile stare, and the luminous stars spinning overhead, it was obvious Frisk's brains were still blown out...

She gave a long-suffering sigh and smiled, "Ah, to be young again..."

*

The banner popped up, confetti exploding out the drum, streamers and sillystring popping out as Sans blew a loud trombone fanfare.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRISK!"

Everywhere, the human was swept up into hugs, backslaps, and the occasional head rub as everyone crowded around. Frisk's normally stoic expression was split with a wide, happy smile as Toriel set a cake down (with an indeterminate number of candles - it was kind of an unofficially accepted thing that, due to the reset phenomenon, no one could really be sure how old Frisk was anymore).

Papyrus had taken up a new hobby of woodcarving, due to the abundance of trees and fallen wood near Sureface, and grinned wider than usual as he pulled a sheet off a large, life-sized wooden statue of Frisk. It would have been a nice gesture if it weren't for the fact that Frisk's usual expression had been carved with such care that the heavy-lidded eyes and sharp mouth made it look like the face of a demented serial killer...

But Frisk was flattered anyway, deciding that after growing up and getting a house, the carving would be the centerpiece of the hallway.

Undyne, smiling her sharp, cocky smile, handed Frisk a large bottle of red liquid. When everyone looked at her in horror, Undyne chuckled. "Tomato juice," she said, "one of the first bottles fresh from Sureface's new farmlands. Apparently, Billy and some of the others heard about my cooking and asked me to try out their new crops. Figured I might as well get to making something useful before they went bad...and I know Frisk loves tomatoes..."

**Pop!**

Frisk had already uncorked the bottle and taken a long swig. The blissful expression and bright smile afterwards made Undyne sure she'd chosen the right present.

Toriel had already plied Frisk with sweet treats and snacks all day as a present (although her experiment with snail cake didn't go so well), and Frisk was worried about getting as fat as Asgore if she kept this up...

...but speaking of the king, he himself was there, smiling politely (though with a slight hidden grimace as he noticed Toriel giving him a wide berth). He offered Frisk a large woven hat made of straw, which was surprisingly well-made and was sure to come in handy when they helped the monsters building and plowing in the summer...

Frisk didn't mind that most of the presents were homemade. Obviously, living in a new, remote colony with human civilization still miles away, there were going to be limited options when it came to gifts and people had to be creative. Besides, Frisk would rather have a single, lovingly-made, useful gift that a hundred generic store-bought ones.

Which was why Sans' gift was much appreciated. Sans being lazy and physically under-equipped like he was, he'd taken up _knitting_ \- of all things - to make himself useful making garments. He gave Frisk a large woolen sweater with the Delta Rune printed on the back, denoting Frisk's status as a de facto member of the royal family.

Alphys, however, stunned them all when she opened a satchel she'd brought with her, removing a small plastic thing that looked like a boxing mouthguard, except it was hollow along the inside and set with two large protrusions at the apex with sealed bottoms.

She gave Frisk the unusual present, rewarded with an inquiring eyebrow.

Alphys smiled, looking unusually sly and pleased with herself, "Oh, it's not for you, Frisk...although it's definitely for your benefit..."

After a moment, everyone caught on and started laughing, as Frisk went slightly red and chuckled, smiling thanks at Alphys.

At that moment, there was a loud knock on the door to Toriel's new cottage.

Undyne turned to the door, "Speak of the devil..."

Frisk glanced out the window. Night of the new moon, perfect.

Papyrus hurried over and opened the door - revealing a massive, hairy, eight-eyed face that took up all the doorway - prompting the skeleton to leap back with a startled shriek.

Muffet leaned down from her seat on her massive pet spider's back, her head poking down through the doorway, "Sorry I'm late everyone! It took me some time to convince my pet there was no light outside!"

She nimbly leapt down and ran through the door, wrapping Frisk up in six-armed hug, "Happy birthday, my love!"

This was met by a chorus of "aww"s from the assembled group (though Undyne made a strangled gagging noise and looked the other way, ignoring Alphys' reproachful look).

Muffet slowly leaned back from her hug to avoid pricking Frisk, but the human smiled and leaned closer, holding up Alphys' present in one hand...

Before Muffet could say a word, Frisk had pushed it into her mouth.

It for snugly over her fangs, covering them with a protective layer while leaving her mouth and other teeth empty.

Frisk then closed the distance between their lips.

There was another, louder "ooooh" from the watchers...

*

Frisk was awake in bed for a great deal of the night, too wired to sleep after the day's excitement. The presents, treats, and fun had left everyone happy, and none more so than Frisk. But the best thing was Muffet had ventured forth from the mountain for the first time to be there.

Also, no one was trying to stop them anymore. They could see how much they cared about each other now.

And she hadn't left after the party.

Right now, she was asleep in a large web hammock she'd spun in the corner of the bedroom. All five of her eyes were shut, and the sound of her sweet breathing echoed in the silence of the night as she reclined in her silk.

It was the most beautiful thing Frisk had ever seen...

Finally, at that last glance, the tiredness descended on Frisk all at once. Yawning and leaning back, Frisk was asleep in a matter of seconds.

Shortly afterwards, five dark eyes opened in the gloom...

Muffet slowly levered herself up onto her elbows, taking care not to make any noise, and stood up.

She silently padded over to the bed, looking down at the small, sleeping form...

Some time passed before she spoke quietly.

"My Frisk...you have no idea how much I have to thank you for..."

"Thanks to you, I could unite all my spider kin. Thanks to you, we are free to live anywhere we want. Thanks to you, we were all saved from being consumed by that flower..."

Her eyes fixed on Frisk's face.

"But one thing I thank you for above all else..." she slowly reached out and brushed a stray lock back from her young love's face.

"I love you, Frisk. I do...."

She then sighed slightly, looking down.

"If only I could tell you...about what's to come. About what you...we will...have to face..."

She clasped two of her lower hands over her heart, "I wish there were an easy way to tell you about our lifespans. I told you I didn't want you to reset again so I wouldn't forget our being together...but your resets were the only thing keeping me alive..."

She lowered her hands again, a tear appearing at the corner of her eye.

"I'm done for, Frisk. In a day or two...I'll be dead..."

She touched Frisk's cheek again, drawing a tiny grunt. "I know you'll be there until the end. I know you won't leave my side. I know you'll love me to the end. I know the last thing I ever see will be your face..."

"...and for that, I thank you most of all."

She deflated further, the tear spilling down her cheek, "I thought I had accomplished everything I set out to do in my lifetime...only to find something else worth living for so close to the end..."

"I wish there were some way I could tell you. I wish there were some way I could make it hurt less. Time is something I don't have anymore, my love, and I want the memory of our last time together to be happy for you...I don't want you to spend it agonizing over any way to save me..."

She gently kissed Frisk's forehead, "We'll be happy for as long as we have left, and maybe -just maybe - that'll be enough..."

And then, she returned to her hammock.


End file.
